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The Life Work of Senator Rodriguez, Part Two

by Senator Rodriguez

July 12, 2018

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This interview with Senator Rodriguez, who represents District 29 in El Paso, was conducted and condensed by frank news. It took place June 28, 2018. This is part one of an ongoing conversation between frank andSenator Rodriguez.

Tatti: We want to clarify the immigration conversation, because what we’re hearing is actually a conflation of lots of issues, and I think it’s detrimental to a real debate about policy.

Sen. Rodriguez: Exactly, you're question earlier was, do you think that there was confusion about the various policies? And the answer is, there is confusion in the American mind. People in any place out of the border, who don't have a sense of what the border is like, what life on the border is like, the reality of border communities, all their impressions of border and border people like myself and immigrants are negative because of the purposeful misinformation that is being put out by politicians and others who are anti-immigrant.

There is no question that there's conflation of refugee versus regular economic immigrants coming in from Mexico or any place else, versus border security with regard to the cartels, human smugglers, the criminal elements, and the category of terrorists.

I think the government has done a disservice to the American public in combining all these issues, and they've done it purposefully.

We never had terrorists come through the Southern border. With regard to the Central American refugees, those are people who the public needs to generally understand are either seeking asylum or are refugees running away from violence or persecution in their countries.

Under our federal laws, long standing policy, international law, anybody who is seeking asylum or refugee status, can legally come up to our ports of entry and legally enter and make an application. They’re supposed to be allowed to be in the country during the period of time that their application winds its way until a final decision. In the meantime when they're here, they're placed with relatives, they’re placed with organizations that care for refugees and people seeking asylum. That's been the long standing policy and process until now. Now we are criminalizing people seeking asylum, everyday I see the headlines, including this morning, of the border patrol stopping people at the middle of the ports of entry, but they have a right to come over and petition, and they’re keeping them from coming over and coming in to petition. Then with the zero tolerance policy under Trump, now separating the children from the mothers, filing criminal charges against the mothers who are seeking asylum status.

In short, the government is criminalizing immigrants who sought to come in here legally. That's what the government is doing under this policy.

With regard to Mexican immigrants, economic immigrants, the long standing migration of Mexicans into this country because of what I said earlier, the demand for labor, what the immigration experts call the push pull factors of economic reality. We need labor? We welcome them in. We don't need them anymore, we push them out.

With respect to whether or not we need comprehensive immigration reform, what do we do with people who have been here without documents for all these years? The estimates have been from 11 to 12 million.

Back when Reagan was in office the estimates were 3 million and President Reagan himself used the word amnesty. We legalized approximately 3 million undocumented immigrants here in this country, most of them Mexicans.

I did some of that work. Pro-bono legalization appeals for some of those who were eligible. A lot of my farm worker clients for example, who have been here without documentation, working for years, paying taxes, contributing to the economy, we got them green cards, permanent legal, permanent resident status.

We have moved from that attitude towards legalization, to a time when amnesty is a bad word for republicans and where we are treating everybody under Trump as a criminal, as a rapist, as a person that should not be tolerated in this country.

All of the rhetoric about immigrants being criminals and harming people and taking jobs away, has caused us to lose sight of doing a humane comprehensive immigration reform that we tried to do several times in the past. The latest one being back in 2006. We did it under Reagan, the Simpson–Mazzoli Act. It was the 1986 immigration reform, what was referred to the Simpson–Mazzoli Act because of the legislators in the senate that passed it.

We've always said that we were going to provide several prongs to comprehensive immigration reform. Legalize the people that are here already, that have paid taxes, that haven't committed crimes, that are contributing to society and of course I always throw in have learned English. Fine. There was the legalization part of it, there was the guest worker part of it to provide permits for workers that were needed by the farmers, by the industry. That was another aspect to it.

The third aspect was to look at our visa system and see what reforms we could make with it. If you are a legal permanent resident, you want to have your parents or your brothers or relatives because our policy on immigration has always been based on family reunification, family ties get priority, now we've gone away from that. The immigration system got so bogged down that they took 10, 20 years for people to bring a relative into the country.

We have gotten away from those because now any discussion about comprehensive immigration reform, even with respect to the dreamers, the republicans don't want to allow them to have citizenship status down the line. That's new. That's something that a lot of people don't pick up on. You guys should emphasize. It used to be that when we talked about comprehensive immigration reform, including republicans on a bipartisan basis, if we were going to do a path to a legalization program we were going to have a path to citizenship. It may take a while, but you were going to be given the opportunity.

Now, the movement on the far right is no citizenship. Why do you suppose that is the case? That is the case because they do not want to give more Latinos the right to vote. The Latinos can make the changes that need to be made in this country.

All of these things are now combined, confused, nobody distinguishes between an asylum seeker or refugee and an economic migrant and a dreamer. Or dare I say, the criminal elements. There's all these people coming over to do us harm, take away our jobs. That is an incredible shift in State policy toward immigrants in this country. We're starting to look no different than Europe that is trying to find ways to keep those economic migrants and refugees from coming into their countries.

The day before yesterday I was over there with the American Federation of Teachers and a lot of different faith organization, Rabbis, Baptists, Catholics, Muslim clerics. We were there for that last Sunday. We're going to go tomorrow. We're coordinating it for New Mexico State Legislators. New Mexico wants to do it's part and they’re bringing doctors and state legislators and Native Americans. A friend of mine who's a state legislator out of Albuquerque, filed a complaint with the United Nations and she wants to come with all of these folks and read it there at the port of entry and then come and do a visit with our Annunciation House over here in El Paso.

What gives me hope is that at these events, we have run into people from Canada, elderly people, people from Florida, from New York, from Alaska. That is what’s heartening.

The change is going to have to come from the people. This government, this new Supreme Court that we have now, is not a place that we can seek solace. It's not a place that we can go and vindicate our rights like we have been used to. Even with conservatives in the court.

Once the new justice gets appointed, of the stripe of Roberts, I'm sorry here young people, but you are going to see some hard times in terms of national policies.

A veering to the right like we have never seen in this country and the way the white nationalist movement is going, and the racists in this country, starting with the President, are going, we may be be looking at past years in Italy, Germany, France and other places where people rose against the different people in this country. Whether your difference is color, whether your difference is your sexual orientation, whether your difference is your religion. I'm painting I know a very black dire scenario, but I'm a student of history, I like politics.

I'm a policy wonk and I know what people have gone through in world history and in this country and what we can expect, if we as people do not rise and assert ourselves.

Finally, your question about Beto and Cruz debating, I don't expect that Cruz is going to want to debate him on the immigration issue. If he does, he's just gonna stay to a very canned message. He files a bill himself to try to keep families from being separated so he can then in the campaign say, I don't support families being separated. Yes, but he supports the President block step and the President is separating families. So he should be held accountable regardless of what he says or what he does. That's my view on Mr. Cruz.

What do you think?

Waste Is A Human Rights Issue

by Baskut Tuncak

January 18, 2019

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Baskut Tuncak is the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and toxics, and a Senior Researcher at Raoul Wallenberg Institute.

What does your role at the UN entail?

The position I have, as Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council is one of an independent, outside voice, providing information and analysis free of political interference. The position was created almost 25 years ago by the former UN Commission on Human Rights to look at the human rights dimension of the issue of waste, in particular transboundary shipments of waste. Large volumes of waste were, and still continue to be, shipped to developing countries and disposed of in ways that are producing grave impacts on human rights.

The Human Rights Council expanded the scope of the mandate in 2011 to look not only at the issue of waste but also to look at the entire life cycle of hazardous substances waste. It vastly expanded the scope of the mandate and changed the title to explicitly include hazardous substances and waste. So, the full life cycle of consumption and production, and the pollution and contamination that results. Everything from the natural resources we extract to produce various chemicals, materials and energy, to emissions of energy generation, to toxics in the workplace and consumer products, and of course all forms of waste.

Basically what I do for the Human Rights Council, and I've had this position since 2014, is report to them every September on current issues and the UN General Assembly in October. I'm given a broad latitude in how I choose to report. I can focus on a particular set of rights, or even a particular right, a particular issue, whether it's environmental or occupational, or both. I present that report every year. Also, I present reports on visits to various countries to evaluate what different governments are doing in terms of protecting human rights from exposure to toxics.

As Special Rapporteurs we also have a mandate to send letters of allegation to national governments, businesses and other actors who are implicated in cases of alleged human rights violations and abuses relating to our mandate. In my case, these are cases of people who are harmed by exposure to toxic chemicals and wastes, poisoned in essence. It's a process by which we send a letter of allegation and then engage in a conversation with the relevant actors to understand the situation better. That can lead to public expressions or views on the case publicly, or actions by other authorities to end the violations, prevent future recurrence and provide remedies for those whose rights have been violated.

Big job.

It is. It is a pro-bono position. The UN Human Rights Council has Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and 5 member teams in Working Groups, the so-called “Special Procedures”. None of us are paid. We do this on a voluntary basis and we are given very limited, if any, financial support in terms of what we need to do to gather the information in order to prepare and present the reports. We're entitled to resources to travel to Geneva and New York to present reports or to undertake the country visits but outside of that, there are very little resources available to us. It's a big job, global in scope, and it's made more challenging by the financial constraints.

How often are you filing allegations?

It depends. Last year we sent quite a few letters of allegation. I would say on average we probably send six to eight per year. Sometimes we do that individually, and sometimes we do it in conjunction with other Special Rapporteurs.

These letters of allegation are publicly available after 60 days, although they're more difficult to find than I think they should be. They usually are the precursor to Special Rapporteurs expressing a view publicly, through a media statement or otherwise.

As an example, would the water crisis in Flint be something you’d write an allegation for?

Absolutely. That's exactly one that we did send. I don't know if you are asking that just by coincidence or because you saw it, but I did send a letter of allegation to the US about the water contamination in Flint, Michigan. That letter focused quite a bit the situation in Flint but also the broader context about minorities and their disproportionate exposure to toxic contaminants in the US. I sent that letter in January of 2016, if I'm not mistaken.

I should mention that the US has opposed this mandate since its inception, saying that the issue of toxic pollution is not a human rights issue. It has consistently voted against the extension of the mandate and was the only country to vote against the renewal of this mandate during the last renewal in 2017.

Are governments legally required to respond?

Legally, no, they are not. There's no requirement on a government to respond. In the case of the US, the US was quite responsive historically. They've been one of the better countries in terms of responding, at least sending a response to the letters that have been sent. However, sometimes substantively less than we would hope to have in order to have a meaningful conversation and understand the situation. But regardless, the US has stopped responding to letters of allegation from Special Rapporteurs, including myself. The most recent letter they did not respond to involved the terrible manner in which hazardous military waste has been disposed by the US armed forces in Puerto Rico. I think the lack of responsiveness to letters of allegations reflects the highly regrettable disengagement from the US from the Human Rights Council and from various other international processes.

There's a history of developed countries using developing countries as a dumping ground. Has that changed at all in the time since you've been working in this role? China's recycling ban has forced some change, but I wonder if you've seen real effort since you've held this position?

The reason the mandate was created in the mid-90s is because the Basel Convention, which is the treaty established in the 1980s to try to deal with the problem of waste being dumped in developing countries, and was viewed by a large number of developing countries, especially those in Africa, as grossly inadequate. Within the framework of the Basel Convention, there have been numerous efforts, many concerted efforts, to ban the export of hazardous waste to developing countries, the so-called “Ban Amendment” being the most notable. This amendment would prohibit the shipment of certain hazardous wastes from OECD members to non-OECD members for disposal, recycling or recovery. However the Ban Amendment has not been ratified by enough countries to enter into force.

The recent changes in China regarding waste imports have certainly forced changes, but there are concerns that the waste is not being recycled or disposed of properly in the countries that have taken up the slack.

The issue of China's waste import restrictions and where those plastics are now heading, largely in other countries in Asia, and how they're being disposed of is very much an open question and one that we need to answer quickly.

Waste movements can be traced, but unfortunately much of it lacks transparency regarding where it goes and how it is disposed, recycled or otherwise dealt with. Illegal movements remain a serious concern, as these things by definition not traceable, measured with the same unsatisfactory methods by which the drug trade is assessed. You can only gauge how well you're doing based on how much you're actually confiscating before it becomes a problem, and that's not a very reliable metric. It's in some ways like the drug trade, and unsurprisingly you do see organized criminal activities involved. Interpol has been working to tackle this problem. Certain states have been able to improve their work with customs agents and border controls to try to ensure that waste shipments are leaving for destinations where they'll be disposed of in dangerous manners, potentially dangerous manners. But let’s not forget that some large corporations are also implicated in scandalous cases of illegal waste dumping in Africa, such as the infamous case of the Probo Koala and Trafigura. There's still a lot of waste leaving countries without sufficient understanding where it’s going or how it will be disposed.

If the US were to decide to take full responsibility for their waste, what are the practical solutions?

In an ideal scenario, countries would manage their wastes within their borders, helping to advance sustainability and reducing the intensity with which we consume raw materials. The reality is, however, that we have legitimized the export of waste, building a global waste economy externalizing the health and environmental hazards of wastes to countries with weaker governance structures, corrupt regimes, or otherwise vulnerable, exploitable populations. Most people are unaware of where their waste goes, that the mountains of trash collapse and kill communities in developing countries, that toxic substances in waste contaminate water and food and circulates around the globe. We need systems in place to ensure a safe, circular economy is developed, including the ability trace what goes into materials that become waste and where the waste goes.

Who should be responsible for tracking the waste?

Governments have a duty to protect human rights and must ensure that the actions of companies within their jurisdiction are not resulting human rights impacts, at home or abroad. The relevant authority can vary from government to government.

However, businesses that produce products that become waste have a responsibility to build traceability systems to track their waste and ensure that human rights abuses do not result. Governments must compel businesses to do this. The limited implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights after 8 years for the implications of toxic substances and wastes clearly points to the need for governments to obligate businesses to conduct such due diligence through legally-binding obligations, rather that the simply an expectation. That said, the fact that many Governments are not compelling companies to conduct human rights due diligence for the risk of toxic exposures by children, consumers, workers and others, does not absolve companies from their responsibility.

Circular Economies come up in nearly every interview we’ve done this month. Can you break down what it means to you in theory, but also what it looks like in practice?

To me, a circular economy is one in which we have essentially a closed loop. Where the inputs and the outputs from the consumption and production cycle are limited. And so, when, say, a consumer product reaches the end of its lifespan, the materials that are contained in there would be recovered and then re-used in some fashion to feed back in, creating a cycle where we don't have the raw materials extracted at the rate that they are. Like I said, ideally it would be one where we're using the raw materials that we already have, the waste that we already have, but to get to that point it's a very long-term, aspirational and ambitious vision, I'd imagine, and one that requires a very holistic life cycle approach, one that includes eliminating toxic chemicals in products, in particular those that are persistent and toxic. To me, that's what a circular economy is. It's putting those systems in place so that we can reduce our reliance on raw materials, creating healthy, sustainable economies and living within planetary boundaries.

Are you optimistic?

The idea of drastically reducing the extraction of non-renewable natural resources altogether, of oil and gas and metals, and minerals, and others, from energy to consumer products – we're not there yet. In fact, we're probably a long ways away from it unless we have the right leaders in industry, government, and the accumulated financial equity and wealth is redirected to the long-term sustainability of our planet and the human race. However, leaders in industry, government and philanthropy are all finally beginning to see the increasing toxification of our planet as one of major concern, distinct but indivisible from the impacts of climate change. This gives me optimism.

However, to have the entire global economy flip a switch and operate in a circular fashion, I'm not too optimistic. It will probably take time, requiring long-term committment on tha part of all, especially those proving the financial support to usher change. That said, there are huge gains to be had in the short term, particularly in the way that we're senselessly producing materials designed to be thrown away. Everything from single-use plastics to ultra cheap clothing material that's largely synthetic and with limited life spans. Yes, for certain consumer products segments, I am optimistic. But I also see risks. For example, if we move away from petrochemicals and move back toward the use of natural fibers for clothing, what I am afraid we will see is an increased reliance on pesticides, fertilizers and other agrochemical pollutants, which will then likely also have a negative and environmental and human health impact.

So, I am optimistic and think it's the right direction to go in but I think it's going to take a lot of effort and care to avoid unintended consequences.

Yeah, not without some collateral consequences, I'm sure.

I'm trying my best to be sure that these potential collateral impacts are taken into account. For sure.

When you look at the breakdown of plastic waste, packaging is a huge portion of the problem. Amazon Prime has completely changed e-commerce. Do you look at, write about, or research the way that these companies should be responsible for their packaging systems?

Well, we could. There have been some efforts in terms of particular waste segments such as electronic waste and medical waste.

Any waste issue involving companies is fair game.

These companies like those that you're talking about are part of the massive e-commerce economy and creating a huge, huge problem for us in terms of the way that the products are packaged and how they arrive. The other day I ordered a microwave from a company and it arrived in at least three cardboard boxes that were nested inside each other like a Russian doll. It seemed to me highly inefficient and unnecessary. On top of all the styrofoam and the plastic in there, everything amounted to an enormous pile of waste that the retailer didn't have to deal with.

There needs to be attention to the way the economy is changing including through e-commerce and the waste implications.

What are some pieces of research you've worked on, or you work with, that need more attention?

One of the biggest and underrecognized issues in my view, when it comes to toxic exposures, is the exposure of children during critical periods of development to a complex mixture of toxic chemicals and pollutants, including waste. So much our health throughout our lives depends on what we are not exposed to as children. Children continue to be born pre-polluted exposed to dozens if not hundreds of different toxic chemicals and pollutants - that we are looking for. We don’t understand the implications of this as well as well should. We don’t have the information necessary on developmental effects of pre- and post-natal exposures to various toxic substances that children may be exposed. And we are procrastinating in understanding the implications of what exposure to a cocktail of substances during childhood can mean. Governments continue to rely on assessments of individual substances for health risk, but the reality is that the mixture of substances we are exposed to can interact and collectively produce grave adverse health outcomes that are not predicted by risk assessments of individual substances. We're deceiving ourselves and future generations if we continue to remain ignorant to the health risks of ongoing widespread exposure of children to toxic chemicals and pollutants and fail to do everything in our power to prevent childhood exposure.

Where can we find some of the UN work you described as difficult to find?

I have a website that also has these letters of allegation and the reports to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. The UN keeps websites for each mandate with their reports, and a database at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights where you can search by various mandates for the letters of allegation.

Public awareness of the reports and letters by Special Rapporteurs is unfortunately very limited. The UN needs to do more to make the work of Special Procedures visible. But, of course, there may be some invisible forces that keep that from happening, and from my mandate still not being referred to as focused on toxic waste, despite the changes made in 2011.

What do you think?

The Largest Cleanup In History

by The Ocean Cleanup

January 16, 2019

The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization, developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.

What technology is at play in your effort to cleanup the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

The idea is to create a coastline where there are none. The system consists of a 600-meter (2000 foot) U-shaped floater that sits at the surface of the water and a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below. The floater provides buoyancy to the system and prevents plastic from flowing over it, while the skirt stops debris from escaping underneath.

Both the plastic and system are being carried by the current. However, wind and waves should propel only the system, as the floater sits just above the water surface, while the plastic is primarily just beneath it. The system thus moves faster than the plastic, allowing the plastic to be captured. Once enough plastic has accumulated within the system, we will retrieve it with a “garbage truck of the sea” and return it to land for recycling.

How do you cleanup microplastics?

The cleanup system is targeting 5 millimeter-sized plastics and above.Microplastics will be extremely hard to retrieve. Although larger plastic fragments and objects, representing above 90% of the mass of trash out there, is a direct source of microplastics through degradation.

Our strategy is to retrieve these before they breakdown and amplify the microplastic contamination.

Are you concerned about waste patterns repeating? If production isn’t halting, what do you anticipate your future to look like?

In order to reach our 90% cleaner ocean by 2040 goal, curative measures such as the development of our technologies aimed at removing the plastic that has already accumulated on the high seas must be met by preventive measures to keep it from entering the oceans in the first place.

Plastic will certainly need to be tackled at the source.

As of 2018, there were 27 countries that enacted policies implementing bans on (some) single-use plastics. The issue of plastic in the ocean and more generally waste generation is receiving global public attention. There is an evident will from citizens, NGOs but also industries and lawmakers to reduce waste generation and subsequently plastic emission into the ocean. In this context, we believe our project will bring further awareness to the plastic pollution problem that will inspire global efforts, on both an individual and collective scale, to be more conscientious of plastic waste.

What are the dangers of leaving these plastics in the ocean?

The amount of plastic left in the ocean will continue to accumulate and cause harm to marine life and ecosystems. Large plastics pose choking and strangulation risks, while small plastics can be ingested leaving animals malnourished – ultimately leading to death. Plastics have also been found to have chemicals that can be passed up the food chain, one that includes us humans.

Where are your other areas of interest, geographically speaking?

We aim to first approach the North Pacific Gyre, also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and then to begin cleaning the other four gyres: Indian Ocean Gyre, North Atlantic Gyre, South Atlantic Gyre and South Pacific Gyre. Once we have proven our technology, we will also consider alternative technology for other waterways.

There’s an emphasis on river input into oceans in your research. Is there a way to stop/collect/remove plastic from rivers before they reach the ocean?

There have been several initiatives to stop plastic from entering the ocean, but nothing yet at a global scale, especially in the most polluting rivers.

Why are rivers so contaminated to begin with?

A lot of this has to do with waste management infrastructure, seeing as how the most-polluting rivers come from countries with an over abundance of waste and not enough recycling/waste disposal facilities to keep up with the quantity of refuse, illegal dumping and industrial outflows.

Much of the river contamination is coming from Asia – with China implementing a recycling ban, do you expect this problem to get better or worse?

China is taking much less “recyclable” plastic from the global waste market. While this is a problem for many countries as curb side collected plastic, now worth very little, are piling up near landfills, I see it as a good opportunity for recycling industries and new product design to thrive locally. While people in the West consume far more plastic per inhabitant, the population density in Asia results in large regional plastic demand and eventually waste.

Economic development in these countries must be met with investment in waste management infrastructure.

How does this project work with governments?

We have continually sought guidance and support from governmental institutions. For instance, in the Netherlands, the Dutch government has subsidized our first prototype testing and allowed us the space to test in the North Sea. They have also entered an agreement that our systems will be covered under Dutch Law according to the provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention. Additionally, we sought guidance from various agencies (both federal and at state level), the US Coast Guard and the City of San Francisco and Alameda when building and deploying our first cleanup system. The US Coast Guard also charted our operations area as a special operations zone to allow our activities to be observed and conducted safely for passing vessels.

Does your effort involve policy?

We have entered into a special agreement with the Government of the Netherlands in regard to our activities offshore.

Who do these oceans belong to?

The oceans are not owned by any entity, but in accordance to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, rules are in place for maritime functions in offshore locations.

What is the process of approval for building and then launching your work out to sea?

Every step of the way, we consulted and sought guidance or permission from local governments. The assembly activities required various permits and specific space requirements that were aided by the City of Alameda, whereas our towing and deployment activities were carefully monitored with the US Coast Guard. We have also sought the advice of experts and have even invited a retired general in the US Coast Guard to join the Board of our North American Foundation.